Alone Protects Me
by MapleleafCameo
Summary: Angry with John for getting hurt, Sherlock tries to drive him away. It doesn't work like that when you are in a relationship. Rated T. Established Relationship Happy Birthday MrsNoggin!


**A/N: For the lovely and talented MrsNoggin, new found friend and co-conspirator to commit mischief in London in 3 weeks:D She gave me the words bathtub, cut and dastardly.**

**Thank you once again to mattslived1 for having a look:D**

**You know the drill – don't own, wish I did. Ben is always on top! Lolololololol!**

It was not a usual occurrence.

That is to say, occasionally it happened, but mostly it did not.

Once in a while after a particularly grueling case, but then nine times out of ten John would be there as well.

This time he was not.

This time Sherlock was asleep, in bed, alone, without John. The troubled and exhausted sleep of someone who was in the wrong, but just didn't quite know how to apologize or, heaven forbid, perhaps he didn't want to admit it.

Typically, since this newfound passion for each other had disrupted their already feral life, the only way John could get him into bed would be for long, slow, satisfying sex, followed by blissful replete slumber. Sherlock could be ensconced at the kitchen table, wrapped up in some obscure experiment and there would be a tug on his arm. He would look up at a sunny smile that complimented the mischievous twinkle in the doctor's eyes, and then, hands joined and fingers tangled, they would retreat to the bedroom, where one or the other or both would be unhurriedly taken apart and perhaps put back together into a new fierce creature that was a combination of their best fragments. Emotions and feelings would be left scattered across the twisted sheets, to be examined at leisure during the afterglow.

But tonight John had disappeared abruptly, stomped from the flat; the thunderclap of a slammed door punctuated his escape. The lightening that had rent the air in the first place, leaving the furious discharge behind, was a particularly hurtful comment flung from Sherlock's **dastardly** and betraying mouth, one that had been designed to **cut** to the marrow and leave an injured and wounded animal in its wake. He honestly couldn't remember what he had said, but he knew it had been vile and uncalled for.

Sherlock had been feeling off kilter since the ending of their last case. He had been rattled, because John had been hurt and he was now uncertain as to whether they should continue as an 'us' and he wondered about going back to being an 'I'. He didn't articulate it in quite those terms; or at least, emotionally, he didn't. He had retreated into a protective barrier of 'I'll hurt him, before he hurts me' sort of place. He was so stifled by it he didn't see doing this, throwing the comment at John, barbed and painful, he might possibly have driven a wedge between them.

He had disappeared to the bedroom, thinking in the back of his head it was a sanctuary and one he could wrap himself in his self-righteous anger. He hadn't been the one foolish enough to try to disarm the unhinged killer with the enormous hunting knife. No. That had been John. John, the irreplaceable, the necessary, had stepped in front of the swing aimed at Sherlock, had grabbed the wrist of the madman and had managed to twist the knife out of his grasp and let it clatter to the ground. He'd then cuffed him and left the killer trussed up like a Christmas goose, ready for Lestrade. It was only when Sherlock had bent down to secure the knife that he had noticed the edge gleamed with the red of freshly drawn blood. At that same moment John had gasped as he came down from the adrenalin high and a wave of nauseating pain washed over him. The knife had scored him along his ribs, not deeply and not mortally but enough that blood loss made him dizzy.

Even though it was John who was hurt, it was Sherlock who turned pale and looked more like death warmed over than his blogger. He rushed to John's side in time to catch him and lowered him to the ground, pressing his hand against the cut.

"Sherlock, I'm fine! It's a scratch!"

"You idiot!" he had yelled at John, whilst under it all he had muttered over and over again "Don't leave me!"He had worked himself up into quite the lather by the time Greg arrived with the paramedics and back up. John had briefly closed his eyes to concentrate on diffusing the pain, but Sherlock saw it as a sign he would have to bury John. He'd held the funeral in his head at least twice and was trying to figure out how he would follow after him, for he would not live without John.

At the hospital Sherlock had been decidedly quiet and although he had not left John's side, he had also had difficulty looking at him, feelings of blame and disgrace haunted him. John should not have been hurt.

These feelings, new and uncertain, freshly out of the box, had left him shaken and raw. After John had come home from the hospital, the detective had withdrawn and become pricklier, lashing out whenever the doctor had tried to discover what, exactly, was the problem. John had made the unfortunate and completely precise guess that the man was scared of losing him, had been since he'd been hurt.

Sherlock, who would rather deny than admit, finally snapped, hurled his cold and calculated insults and John had left the flat.

For the first ten minutes or so he had felt vindicated in pushing the other man away from him, as he wrapped his solitude around him like armor, protecting himself from the complexities of John and the way his emotions had been steadily picking away at Sherlock's fortress, ready to bring it down brick by brick.

That had been hours ago and Sherlock, after storming over and around and through the furniture, convinced John had left him for good and deservedly so, had finally collapsed on their bed and had fallen asleep. He had not slept since the knifing and was out before his head hit the pillow.

He was so deep he did not hear the creak on the stairs or the slow groan of the bedroom door opening as John came back into the room, tired, wondering if he should slept upstairs, wondering about picking up Sherlock and dropping him head first into a **bathtub **full of icy water. He saw his friend, his flatmate, his newly minted lover, lying asleep, curled into himself, hugging John's own pillow as if he could claim John to himself. His tousled curls swept across his forehead and in front of his eyes. The ex-soldier's heart softened.

_He looks so young_, he thought.

_He acts like a nine year-old,_ followed on the heels.

With a heavy sigh, he sat down on the bed and reached over and brushed the boyish locks off of the younger man's face. He pursed his lips together and sighed,

_What am I going to do with you?_

Sherlock stirred beneath the other's touch and blinked slow and heavy. A languid smile graced his lips as he realized it was John and then his face shifted quickly into panic mode as he realized it was John.

"John! I'm sorry. Don't leave me. Please stay. It won't happen again!" Tumbled out of his mouth.

John placed a finger upon Sherlock's mouth. "Shhhh! It's all right, you git. Yes it will happen again. Yes you will say spiteful things and I will blow up and get angry. Yes I may get hurt or you may get hurt, but I still love you and perhaps overtime, you'll learn to tell me when you are afraid rather than chanelling it into anger." He paused and looked down at this impossible man. "I love you, you know. And no matter how much that scares you, I fully intend to stay here and make you miserable." The blaze of warmth returned to John's eyes and Sherlock smiled a tentative smile. "Just talk to me. Please? This is new to me, too. And I know you sometimes think driving me away will be better, but it won't. We are meant for this."

Sherlock blinked. "I don't like it," he said.

"What don't you like?"

"Feeling like this. It's all jumbled and…messy. I can't control it."

John chuckled and bent down and bushed his lips on Sherlock's temple, "Welcome to the wonderful world of love."

Sherlock wrapped his hand around the back of John's neck and pulled him down into a unruly kiss as he tried to tell him with touch and caresses that alone was not acceptable and he would rather be with John than ever be the solitary man he had been before.


End file.
